I was sitting in my usual spot by my window. The cold from the window seeped into my bones through the thick jersey I was wearing. The rain ran in rivulets down the windowpane, and I traced their path with my finger.

I had wanted to leave the castle since I can remember, but it was frightening to leave the only place I had ever been for sixteen, almost seventeen, years. What it the other side of the clouds were not as I had always imagined it would be. What if?

Through the hazy mistiness I saw the faint glow of a car’s headlights as it bounced off and was reflected within the drops of rain on the glass.

Looking up, I saw the car drive through the large ornate gate, which guarded our castle from the outside world. My eyes followed its slow progress up the long, gravelled driveway until it stopped in front of our large and heavy front door.

When he climbed out of the car, I did not recognize Bradley at first. Then for a moment, I felt that old happiness well up in my chest, but I repressed it. These days, it was usually a short-lived pleasure anyway. His blonde hair was combed in a modern style. His shoulders looked square from up in my room, and he looked taller than when I saw him only a few months ago.

He pulled his bag from the taxi and then he lifted his head to look up at the castle. Our eyes met and it seemed as if his eyes had also become bluer than the eyes, I had gotten used to.

I started to smile but then stopped as I stared down at him. I straightened my legs as he continued to look up at me, and then moving away from the window, I went to sit down at my writing desk.

Mr. Glenfiddich had given me a History assignment and although only a couple of minutes ago I had no intention of ever doing it, I now decided to start. I had three long months in which to finish it before I would have to go away.

When Bradley was here, he stayed with his mother in the servant’s cottages at the back of the castle. At night it was only me and Mr. Belvedere who stayed in this big, cold, dark and lonely building.

After two days, I still had not seen Bradley and assumed he preferred to stay at the cottage, rather than coming to the castle, for fear of having to see me. Did he dislike me that much?

Shortly before twelve o’clock, there was a gentle knock on my door and I stood up from my desk, marking the page I was reading with a bookmark.

As I opened the door, thinking it might be Matilda coming to call me for lunch, my words froze on my lips.

Bradley stood in front of me. He looked so worldly-wise in a dark blue denim pants and a grey T-shirt, which hugged his broad shoulders snugly.

Taking a sharp breath, I could not think of anything to say.

He smiled and it lit his perfect blue eyes. “I thought we could go for a walk?”

I took a step away from him. “Why?”

He looked past me to the large Gothic windows behind my back. “It’s a beautiful day.”

I looked back across my shoulder. Outside looked a little brighter than usual. He must be used to days even more beautiful than this day, so why would he think this was a beautiful day? Looking back at him unsure, I took a step toward him. “Where do you want to walk to?”

He stepped into the carpeted corridor in front of my room as I pulled my bedroom door closed behind me.

“Remember that place in the woods where we always pretended there were hidden faeries?”

“I do.”

“Let’s go there. I haven’t been there in forever.”

Only last week I had gone there remembering days gone by and hoping wishes did eventually come true. Jokingly I asked, “You believe in faeries now?”

Together we walked along the deep burgundy carpet covering the stone floors and nervously I traced my fingertips along the rough edges of the walls on my side.

“No, but I do remember it had a magic-ness about it, and I am bored out of my bracket,” he said.

I felt insulted.

In silence we walked next to each other down the circular wooden staircase with the wide risers. When the large crystal chandelier, which hung dead centre in the middle of the circle formed by the stairs, was eye-level with us, he interrupted the quiet surrounding us, “That chandelier always reminds me of the way the dew glittered off the leaves in the hidden faerie kingdom.”

I glanced at him, and he was smiling amused. I wondered if he was making fun of me.

In the large foyer, we walked across the polished stone floor decorated with large Persian rugs, toward the large wooden doors. He pulled on the heavy door and then he let me walk out ahead of him. I waited on the top step for him, and when he joined me again after closing the door, we stepped down the curved stoned steps to the gravelled driveway. As we walked away from the castle, he looked back across his shoulder. “If you haven’t been here for a while, this place looks a little spooky when you get back again.”

I was not sure what to say, I had always been here, and I did not know what it felt like to go away and to come back. The sea was rolling continuously toward the cliffs. I could not see the waves crashing against the rocks down below, but I could hear the sound as the vast greyness of the sea moved up and down constantly.

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